1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally directed to the transfer of information over a communication network. Specifically, the present invention relates to the collection of information related to consumer click-through traffic through the use of an authoritative domain name server.
2. The Relevant Technology
The internet creates new ways to transfer information between users throughout the world. Ever evolving services as implemented through the internet provide for the communication of information for business, education, work, private, and social purposes. As a result, these services attract increasing numbers of users to the internet year after year.
More particularly, advertising through the internet is an effective way to promote products and services directly to targeted consumers. Different methods have been created for presenting advertising over the interne and the corresponding payments by the advertisers for displaying the advertising.
For example, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising allows for web sites, as a publisher, to display advertising that include links that when actuated brings a consumer directly to the advertiser's web site. These advertisements may be managed by the owner of the web site, by an advertising network (e.g., search engine) that is used by a consumer to access the web site, or by a combination of both.
In another example, a search engine directly displays advertising or sponsored links during the course of a consumer's search request. In this case, when a consumer enters a search query, a list of web site results is returned. In addition, advertising in the form of sponsored links to various websites are also provided that can be targeted to the consumer based on the search terms used in the query.
In each of these cases, the advertiser will pay to those who manage the advertising a fee whenever a consumer clicks on the advertising. For instance, the advertiser may pay a fee to the owner of the web site upon which the advertising is displayed, the search engine used to access the web site, or a combination of both. More specifically, a search engine is capable of tracking the click-through activity by consumers for a particular advertisement. As such, the search engine can produce reports that provide various search click-through statistics, as well as a billing activity related to the click-through statistics. Based on the report, the advertiser will pay a certain fee for tracked and valid click-throughs.
However, click fraud may distort the actual number of valid click-throughs for a particular advertisement. Click fraud may be implemented by a number of parties, to include the web site owner that hosts the advertising itself clicking on the advertisement for collection of more fees, a competitor of the advertiser for purposes of making the advertiser increase or reach prematurely their advertising budget by paying for irrelevant clicks, etc.
In response, publishers of advertising and search engines have implemented various filters to identify the number of fraudulent click-throughs. As such, the advertiser need not pay for invalid click-throughs. However, these filtering techniques typically are guarded by the implementing search engine, and are not released to the general public or to the advertisers relying on the filtering in order to pay for valid and the most effective internet advertising. That is, while a report may indicate the number of fraudulent click-throughs, the advertiser has no way to verify that the number reflects the actual number of fraudulent click-throughs. As a result, third party auditing services that monitor click-through rates have evolved to provide additional statistical data for purposes of verifying click-through reports provided to advertisers.